Daily Archives: September 10, 2012

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the biggest quantitative easer of all? Brazil has long accused governments in the developed world of using loose monetary policy to pump up their economies and get a competitive edge. But it may be time for Brazil to reflect on its own actions over the past five years.

During that time, Brazil has received huge capital inflows, pushing its foreign reserves from about $80bn at the end of 2006 to about $380bn today (see chart below). The central bank says it has “sterilised” those potentially expansionary and inflationary inflows by selling government bonds – standard practice at central banks around the world.

Watching the panel discussion on BBC’s Newsnight programme after the ECB’s announcement of its Outright Monetary Transactions policy last Thursday, a long-running criticism of central bankers was brought powerfully home even before any of the guests had opened their mouths.

For here was an all-woman group of qualified observers discussing decisions made in an environment so male-dominated it might as well be one of London’s traditional gentlemen’s clubs in St James. The ECB has no women on its executive board and none of the 17 heads of eurozone central banks that join the executive board on the bank’s rate-setting governing council is led by a woman. And the ECB is far from an exception — women are exceptionally rare in central banks the world over.

Economists love to portray themselves as iconoclasts who follow the evidence and act rationally. So why is central banking gender politics so 19th century? Read more

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Chris Giles has been the economics editor of the Financial Times since 2004. Based in London, he writes about international economic trends and the British economy. Before reporting economics for the Financial Times, he wrote editorials for the paper, reported for the BBC, worked as a regulator of the broadcasting industry and undertook research for the Institute for Fiscal Studies. RSS

Claire Jones is the FT's Eurozone economy correspondent, based in Frankfurt. Prior to this, she was an economics reporter in London. Before joining the Financial Times, she was the editor of the Central Banking journal. Claire studied philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics. RSS

Robin Harding is the FT's US economics editor, based in Washington. Prior to this, he was based in Tokyo, covering the Bank of Japan and Japan's technology sector, and in London as an economics leader writer. Robin studied economics at Cambridge and has a masters in economics from Hitotsubashi University, where he was a Monbusho scholar. Before joining the FT, Robin worked in asset management and banking. RSS

Sarah O’Connor is the FT’s economics correspondent in London. Before that, she was a Lex writer, covered the US economy from Washington and the Icelandic banking collapse from Reykjavik. Sarah studied Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge University and joined the FT in 2007. RSS

Ferdinando Giugliano is the FT's global economy news editor, based in London. Ferdinando holds a doctorate in economics from Oxford University, where he was also a lecturer, and has worked as a consultant for the Bank of Italy, the Economist Intelligence Unit and Oxera. He joined the FT in 2011 as a leader writer. RSS

Emily Cadman is an economics reporter at the FT, based in London. Prior to this, she worked as a data journalist and was head of interactive news at the Financial Times. She joined the FT in 2010, after working as a web editor at a variety of news organisations.
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Ralph Atkins, capital markets editor, has been writing for the Financial Times for more than 20 years following an economics degree from Cambridge. From 2004 to 2012, Ralph was Frankfurt bureau chief, watching the European Central Bank and eurozone economies. He has also worked in Bonn, Berlin, Jerusalem and Brussels. RSS

Ben McLannahan covers markets and economics for the FT from Tokyo, and before that he wrote Lex notes from London and Hong Kong. He studied English at Cambridge University and joined the FT in 2007, after stints at the Economist Group and Institutional Investor. RSS